Kilen: Charlies reunite and move on one step at a time

Mar. 14, 2013

Charlie Mason, left, bumps knuckles with Chuck Galeazzi inside the room Galeazzi set up for the man just out of prison. / Mike Kilen/The Register

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KNOXVILLE, IA. — Chuck Galeazzi thought the homeless man he was helping had disappeared into the Iowa legal system. But late last week Charlie Mason returned to Knoxville, wearing his trademark black leather jacket.

“What do we do with the people they let out of jail?” Galeazzi asked.

Galeazzi knows he is the answer. The 67-year-old full-time volunteer put up Mason, 49, in a crisis shelter apartment and jumped back on the roller coaster that is helping a man with mental health issues.

Mason was featured in a Des Moines Sunday Register story, which highlighted a small town’s struggle to help a man with mental illness who had become a fixture on Knoxville streets. He was released from the Iowa Medical and Classification Facility in Oakdale and appeared in Marion County court Friday afternoon, where he pleaded guilty to public intoxication. Mason was set free pending his April 5 sentencing and requirements to secure housing and take his antipsychotic medications.

“The system says you are incompetent to stand trial and holds you for seven months because you are mentally ill. ‘Now here are your pills.’ So you’re OK?” asked Galeazzi, a volunteer housing coordinator for Helping Hands in Knoxville.

Galeazzi can do little but tend to Mason every day, ask him if he’s taking his pills and try to keep him busy. Long-term mental health treatment is more difficult if the ill refuse it — which Mason has done repeatedly — and balk at taking drugs that might help them.

“I shouldn’t be on medication,” said Mason, sitting in his apartment. “I took it so I could get out.”

Galeazzi gently asked Mason if had taken his morning medications, and Mason nodded yes.

“Chuck helped me and got me a place and some food. I appreciate that man,” Mason said.

Mason was charged with public intoxication, assault on a peace officer and interference with official acts in August, and after several months in the county jail was sent to the state classification facility because he was ruled mentally incompetent to face his charges. After receiving treatment at Oakdale, he entered his guilty plea for public intoxication, and the other charges were dismissed.

Mason said he wanted to “get off” Risperidone, a drug used to treat schizophrenia, episodes of manic behavior or other psychotic disorders. But when Galeazzi asked him if it was actually doing him good, Mason admitted, “It helps control me some.”

Galeazzi also provided his own prescription: He enlisted Mason to help deliver a sofa to a person in need, sack 420 bags of groceries from the Helping Hands pantry and aid a 93-year-old man who was moving his possessions to a nursing home.

Galeazzi told Mason that he has many friends here and needs to let them help him lead a better life “one baby step at a time.”

In prison, Mason was given art projects, so Galeazzi is looking for a place where Mason might channel some energy into art. Mason pulled two rolled-up sheets of his artwork from under his bed. One included a large red heart. The other included birds flying above these words: “Bless This Home.”